Recently I have been getting so many messages about meditation that I finally just couldn’t ignore them and started meditating. I have tried meditating before and had a really hard time. I realized I was trying to do it on my own without a teacher. This often doesn’t go well when we are trying to learn something new. It was kind of like trying to teach yourself complex math with just a text book and no teacher (I should know; I have tried to do that before but that is another story). I have since discovered the benefits of guided meditation. In guided meditation you listen to someone who guides you through visualizations and relaxation techniques and for me this has made all the difference between failure and success. At some point I may be able to do meditation on my own without listening to an audio but for now, I am loving listening to them.

The Benefits of MeditationThere are so many benefits to meditation and if you want to improve your life dramatically in a whole host of ways then there is no reason you should not be practicing meditation.We live is such a stress oriented, active society but often we are working so hard to try to create a good quality of life but that are stressed in body in mind which is not a good quality of life. Meditation can help give us the perspective, peace, and focus we need to change our life in dramatic ways. I love this quote about meditation, “Meditate for an hour every day unless you are too busy. In that case meditate for two hours.” If you are so busy you can’t find an hour (or ten minutes) meditating can help you refocus and figure out how to work better and smarter. Here are a few benefits of meditation on health and wellness. The percentages are compared with non-meditators:

These statistics are from over 100 scientific papers on meditation. You can read more about this and download a free meditation guide here: http://liveanddare.com/benefits-of-meditation/

Practicing Meditation

There is a reason they call it practicing! Meditation is not easy at first but most people expect that it should be. It’s like any new kind of exercise program, its hard at first! And I really do think of this as an exercise program; it’s exercise for the mind. You wouldn’t expect to run a marathon without training so don’t expect yourself to be able to meditation easily without some practice first too. It sounds simple to sit and focus or not focus depending on how you look at it for a few minutes to an hour at a time, but it will feel hard at first and that’s ok. It’s called a practice for a reason because you do need to work at it. And there are many benefits from doing even if it seems like you are terrible at it at first. You may feel like you are doing anything but relaxing or emptying your mind or whatever. Do it anyway and after a period of time, your mind will quiet and you will feel peace. Here are a few tips for successful meditation practice:

• Find a peaceful and quiet place where you can relax without distractions• Get comfy (I like to lay down)• Drink water so you are hydrated and not distracted before you start• Have dim lighting or candle light to help your mind be less stimulated• Listen to peaceful music or a guided meditation to help you start• Don’t set expectations, just allow yourself to have the experience, whatever it needs to be

If you want to explore meditating, there are some great easy resources to do so. You can download my grounding and clearing audio meditation which helps you learn how to ground yourself and clear your energy field. There are also some great free guided meditations on Spotify’s Guided Meditation playlist. You can check that out for free here. Deepak Chopra has some great free ones as does Philip Permutt on that playlist so there is literally no reason not to try it. So I know that meditating can seem daunting but there are so many benefits if you can work through any resistance you have to it. There are literally so many benefits to it, it is silly not to at least try it .